Blissfully Bored without Booze

If any of the following resonates with you, it is simple to contact Holla & Heard for alcohol help in Ilkley, Harrogate, Leeds, Yorkshire.

It’s not often you hear adults proclaim they’re bored, it’s more in the realm of the child’s world. In this era of gratitude and feeling blessed, for an adult to proclaim they are bored would mark them out as a social pariah. To declare boredom would be to cast disinterest on the wonders of being alive and making every moment count.

What is boredom?

‘Boredom’ is often neglected in the discourse of emotions. I know a lot about it, or rather I know a lot about getting rid of it. Boredom is an unpleasant feeling, a mix of being agitated, apathetic and empty. No fun there and not something I was ever inclined to welcome. Boredom used to rear it’s ugly head most often when the kids were little and tucked up safely in bed. I had no option of going out and I’d be too fatigued to do anything. No surprise here but what used to work for me was a large glass of wine, ‘mummy’s little helper’. That niggling nervous feeling would be gone and the time would pass in a humdrum way until lights out. The sun would rise, the day would begin again and by evening time the pattern would be played out in repeat.

The connection between boredom and addiction

The boredom would be gone but the time was also gone, for years all that time spent uneventfully. What a waste, now let’s be clear, boredom and relaxation are completely different . Relaxation is the yin to works’ yang and I wasn’t relaxing, merely passing time with wine.

There’s a strong correlation between people who experience boredom frequently and people with addictive tendencies, including alcohol abuse. Turning to alcohol to alleviate boredom is a self destructive path which can become out of control and at best lead to a lacklustre lifestyle fuelled by booze.

The brilliant side of boredom

So after winging it on wine for so long did I then, without it, have to resign myself to struggling through a life filled with great chasms of boredom? Not so, I know that no good ever comes from blocking our emotions, they have a tendency to seep out in insidious ways and wreak havoc with our lives. So, what is the purpose of boredom?

Our emotions are there to tell us to take notice, they are saying something that we need to hear. It turns out that feeling bored is pretty damn useful and not that boring after all.

If we never felt bored we wouldn’t get the urge to ‘do’, to ‘make’, to ‘create’, we would be content to carry on in a ‘groundhog day’ kind of way.

Boredom is one of the most suppressed emotions we have but it’s actually the source of our creativity; it gives us time to connect with our feelings and work out how to have more meaning in our lives.

To drink away the boredom is to annihilate one of our precious human skills.

So banish the booze and bring on the boredom, I’m all on board for getting our creative powers working their magic!